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Despite public outcry, South Africa has decided to roll out comprehensive sexuality education in schools. Currently, however, there are no scripted lesson plans for teachers of learners with visual impairment. Local literature suggests that the current sexuality education curriculum fails to engage with sexuality diversity and is imbued with notions of compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodiedness, perpetuating homophobia, transphobia and ableism in schools and broader communities. The paper sought guidance from disability professionals on how to best address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexualities' (LGBT+) issues as part of comprehensive sexuality education for learners with visual impairment. Bourdieu's work on doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy underpinned the study. Three professionals working with learners with visual impairment were interviewed in a focus group, and one school principal working in a school for learners with visual impairment was interviewed individually. Data were thematically analysed. Pre- and in-service teachers are encouraged not to see comprehensive sexuality education offered to learners with visual impairment as different from that provided to their sighted peers. Professionals urged teachers to accept LGBT+ learners with visual impairment in their dress, expression and embodiment. However, teachers need to be aware of learners' cultural and religious differences. Current lesson plans need to be revisited to safeguard against compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodiedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw from elements of a study that sought to examine how teenage South African girls, both white and black African, articulate their relationship with online sexually explicit materials (SEM). The study contributes to the literature by resisting the dominant discursive practices underlined by the construction of sexuality as an exclusive realm of danger for teenage girls. Challenging this static version of femininity, we focus on the ways in which teenage girls, aged between 13 and 18 years old in two elite private schools, use online SEM to expand their sexual knowledge and engage in pleasurable forms of sexuality. By drawing on individual interviews, focus group discussions and open-ended visual elicitation research methods, we show how girls embrace online SEM in ways that expand the definition of femininity beyond fearing sexuality whilst demonstrating the entanglement with gender inequalities. Girls' relationship with online SEM, whilst tenuous, disrupts normative assumptions around femininity. However, an ambiguous relationship with online SEM is evident as their challenges to dominant femininity are mediated by concerns about respect and innocence, as well as by persistent evidence of male power within online SEM. Implications for school-based sexuality education concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed using queer theory and intersectionality theory, this paper unpacks the various ways in which Black South African male teachers who engage in same-sex relations negotiate and manage their identities in a context deeply riddled by the history of apartheid. Eight male teachers were interviewed using a life history methodology. Consistent with many international studies on the work experiences same-sex identifying teachers, the paper argues that the interviewed male teachers draw on a passing act in order to manage their identities in school contexts characterised by a culture of heteronormativity. This adopted passing act mainly draws upon the enactment of hyperprofessionalism, a localised form which safeguards same-sex 'desiring' teachers against possible homophobia. While this form of passing grants teachers significant respect and power, leading at times to the disruption of homophobia, not all teachers enjoy this power. Some teachers are forced out of their schools by threatened managers. The paper calls for more interventionist work at both basic education and higher education levels in South Africa in order to make schools more inclusive and welcoming for all students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 25 years, there has been growing investment in concepts of rights in the areas of HIV prevention, care and treatment, including HIV- and AIDS-related education delivered in schools. Despite this increasing commitment to the notion of rights, few efforts appear to have been made to understand the varying conceptions of rights that underpin different kinds of initiatives. Engaging with a multi-disciplinary body of literature on the issue of rights, and through a focus on three rights-informed HIV- and AIDS-related initiatives, this paper seeks to address this gap in the current literature. In so doing, it also examines a central tension within human rights discourse, namely between the construal of rights as shared and universally applicable to all human beings, while being created in and limited by the location in which they were elaborated, as well as by the language used to formulate them. More explicit engagement with the diversity of approaches made possible through a commitment to human rights may facilitate forms of HIV- and AIDS-related education that are more meaningful to young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehending praxis is a critical step in developing interventions that can have a real-world impact on people's lives. In this paper, we reflect on the lessons learned in the development of a curriculum for young people living in informal settlements in eThekwini, who are exposed to numerous vulnerabilities, including HIV-related risks associated with precarious urban livelihoods. Behavioural interventions have not led to commensurate reductions in HIV incidence, and the impact of these approaches remains regulated by numerous contextual conditions affecting those participating. Our collaborative project tested the impact of implementing a combination of the well-tested gender transformation intervention, Stepping Stones, with a new livelihood transformation curriculum, Creating Futures, among young people in eThekwini's informal settlements. Creating Futures was grounded in the theory and practice of sustainable livelihoods, but equally in the experience of the multi-disciplinary project team members who have conducted both research and development work among youth in the eThekwini area. Our approach was founded on the work of Doug Kirby, and we are indebted to him for his inputs. His logical model approach ensured that the team remained orientated to specific curriculum outcomes. Analysis of the results at 12 months post-baseline indicates positive livelihood outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]